Destiny 2 Lore - Who or What are the Headless Ones? (Byf’s Halloween Conspiracy Theory special)

Destiny 2’s Lore in the Festival of the Lost tells us about the Headless ones, a group of Hive knights that were probably made by Nokris somehow… but let’s check our other valuable conspiracy theories first…

[Forcer]

“Dread from it, run from it, Luna-4 arrives all the same.”

[adarshkamoda]

Byf's soul was shattered when he imagined Zavala with the pumpkin over his nether regions.

[ciaran]

My theory: The Headless ones are soldiers in Telesto's army, seeing as we know the gun is basically sentient at this point and plans to take over the game alongside Taniks, and eventually merge together to become Telestaniks, The Final Shape. What connects these things you may ask? Well, Telesto fires grape flavoured energy, or Void, and the Headless Ones... heads (yeah I haven't quite figured that out yet...) are also made of grape energy. Pretty solid evidence if you ask me.

[adamherrick]

Glint for only the 240, 568th time: “IT’S THE HEADLESS ONES”

[LordEverlost]

Saying "it was aliens" is a pretty acceptable to answer in the Destiny universe. Great video, lots of chuckles!

[ShadowPIXL_]

Well since S15 is about highlighting the events that lead to Witch Queen, then that means the lore behind FotL is very important. It shows us that Hive Necromancy can work on beings that are not Hive such as the deceased Humans, Exos and Guardians, turning them into Knights. If Hive Necromancy can work on dead Guardians, what's to say it can't work on dead Ghosts, creating the Hive Ghosts

[adarshkamoda]

Eris: "If such a thing existed, *I* would have seen it."
Me: "... Well, I guess we'll have to chalk this up to yet another time a Guardian just didn't believe a word out of your mouth. Or ignored you completely."
Eris: 🙃

[starlightthewolf]

Honestly, the fact that a cryptarch might have ancient archives of Halloween porn nearly had me dead from laughter

[FalconerX]

A few things to unpack. Firstly the sheep dog thing: the Fall that ended the Golden Age was practically an extinction level event. It could very well be that what we currently know as "sheepdogs" suffered from loss of popularity/utility through the time after the Travelers arrival, and data loss from the collapse obscured things even more. Add that to dogs reverting to their more primal ancestry out of survival necessity, there probably aren't many sheepdogs left after 300-600 years.

Second, Eris not seeing them is less debunking than you would think, especially if Nokris was involved. The Hive did purge him from all their records, it too could hold that they would have tried to do the same with any of his experiments, particularly in somewhere like Crota's seat of power.

Finally, two out of three of the places concerned were heavily influenced by the Darkness, and arguably by the same strain of Darkness. The K1 Anomaly did send Clovis Bray to Clarity, and it is entirely possible the Exos involved were present at K1 prior to their conversion. That does kind of leave Nessus the odd place out though, at least from what we know. I'm thinking maybe there is a lot more to Nessus than just the Vex, that perhaps there is another Statue of Darkness or similar object on the planetoid, one that caused the crash of the Exodus Black and beckoned Callus. In which case, perhaps the Headless ones are a combination of humans who died while under the influence of Darkness and a conjuring of Nokris...

[Thelacker]

"Alien Guy, Horny Guy, and Idiot Guy"

Ah, the leaders of the Spooky Vanguard.

[aceofaces]

Serious comment: I think there is a pretty big thing that was overlooked here. Wasn’t it a pretty big deal in Shadowkeep that we fought Nightmare manifestations of deceased Destiny bosses, like Oryx, Gaul, etc? What if the headless ones are similar Nightmare manifestations born out of the Darkness itself (with or without Nokris’ influence)? It may also explain how the Legend of Sleepy Hollow survived to serve as an influence despite the actual story itself being erased from humanity’s knowledge during the Collapse: the Darkness was there to bring humanity to its knees, saw everything humanity accomplished and laid it to waste. The Darkness could have also learned of humanity’s folklore and decided to keep such ideas for later use, such as tormenting Guardians with the ghosts of dead bosses, or these headless ones.

[doofers]

Moira's gonna be upset about luna 4 not being a significant part in this video

[rasmusdegn]

8:01 Thank you for dispelling the myth of lumberjacks Byf, now tell us about your encounter with that yeti.

[cas]

Just reviewing my notes but I think I got everything I've learned from this FOTL:

1) Moira gets a time out in horny jail
2) This was a really silly fun idea and I hope Bungie makes this a regular thing lol

[JosephLC]

Well, I mean, the Headless Ones obviously exist because you’ve fought and killed them. Most likely, Nokris ripped the idea of the Headless Horseman from Humanity’s collective subconscious, decided, “that’s neat, ” got together some decapitated Hive Knight bodies, put pumpkins on where their heads should have been, and then used his necromantic powers to revive them.

Basically, Nokris made the Headless Ones as one of his necromancy experiments. That’s my theory, anyway.

[TheDWffle]

Alien guy seems like the kinda guy who'd say Cayde is Rasputin.

[Cvwally]

22:41 in other words, Barb says he’s friends with birds

[whitewarrior]

Hm... alright, let's try and flesh this out.

Let's start with Europa, running alongside Luna. Clovis is messing around with K1 and Clarity Control, and this begins having an effect on not only the researchers, but newer Exos. This also possibly affects the machinery plugged into Vex stuff in Cadmus Ridge, after all it was one of, if not the only, undocumented facility on Europa and thus may have unauthorized connections. This effect manifested in the shadow figure Dr. Bow sees and the vision of a machine the Exos see. I can see both their decapitations as the Darkness learning more about the system. The Guardian decapitations on Nessus could also be done by the Vex. [They could've just as easily have been done by the Fallen but it'd be simpler to assume this is the Darkness manipulating the Vex again]

Cut to Season of Arrivals. With the appearance of the Pyramids, spots of Dark activities begin flaring up, such as the beheadings on Europa, Luna and Nessus. Nokris, now Savathûn's underling, takes note of this and investigates Europa, pulling miscellaneous info from the subconscious remnants of the Exo heads.

With this, he begins using the sorrow and anguish from all three Lost Sectors, along with the random but supposedly important data from the lives of the dead Exos, to create Knights without heads. No weak points to take advantage of, nothing but hatred and armor. However, because of the random assortment of Exo thoughts, their undiluted soul filled in the gaps, making pumpkin heads. Nokris saw this as a failure, and locked them away without regard for how well the lock was kept, thus leading to them breaking out every so often.

Strange that they only tend to appear around the Festival however... perhaps Yareli was on to something about the seams of planes being weaker around this time of year...

[codyconnor]

I want a conspiracy video on how Telesto seems to remain broken as hell despite all of the nerfs Bungie has given it.

[LittleShySky]

Theory: The headless ones were guardians who got trapped behind a pay wall and couldn't afford a full character model.